


that time and light are kinds of love

by museicalitea



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Inspired by Poetry, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-26
Updated: 2018-09-26
Packaged: 2019-07-15 01:44:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16052867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/museicalitea/pseuds/museicalitea
Summary: today you get a telegramquiet and unobtrusive, like he just sat down beside you and took out his headphones to a comfortable silence where you didn't need to say a thing. You don't even notice it until an hour later.On a boy who touches the world with sunlight.





	that time and light are kinds of love

**Author's Note:**

> After Tony Hoagland's _[The Word.](https://alisonmcghee.com/2013/09/07/poem-of-the-week-by-tony-hoagland-3/)_

_Down near the bottom_  
_of the crossed-out list_  
_of things you have to do today,_

 

is  _car → gas,_  scrawled hastily and clumsily with your left hand.

You wrote it while holding the phone as he called you in your expiring parking spot; you forgot your headphones at the apartment and forgot you were in the car and could use the speakerphone because this is the way the two of you have always talked. You mutter _if I can read my own handwriting later,_ and he chuckles, and you think of how he is left-handed and writes with looping script easy as a laugh with one hand, yet still scribes neat, practised strokes with the other, and would have none of your trouble at all.

The city hums past in streaks of chrome and loud chatter and the clamour of high summer. His voice sweeps over you, a sea breeze languid and sweet like cola, and it lets something in your heart simmer down and quiet its beating. This heart has been all over the world, restless and relentless as you chase your dream. There is a pull in it now that will never settle, even as you put down your roots and let them grow deep. But you have things you remember, on those restless days when the thought of uprooting yourself once again crosses your mind.

A song comes onto the radio, a bubbling remix with swirling beats that sounds like dancing feels when you’re with him. You wind down the window and let the breeze rush in, and laughter carries in through the window.

When he reaches out to steady you, it is sometimes as a call and his voice washing lyrical over you. Most other times, it goes something like this:

 

 

 

  _today you get a telegram_

 

which leads you to a rink bigger than you imagined for a small town buried deep in so large a country. You suppose your expectations are skewed; your home rink in a big city is big because you are the only one skating there so much of the time.

You enter to hear the _schwick_ and rush of bright blades over clean ice, and the weight in the bag on your back presses against you, as if urging you to vault the wall and let yourself take off. But you wait until those skates are on your feet, laced tight, before you approach.

There are two figures on the rink, one marking through jumps and calling out, _nearly ready, nearly ready!_ , and the other holding a green-cased phone and laughing at him to _take your time! Your Instagram followers aren’t gonna run away on you!_ He shakes his hair out of his face, and your heart stops when he ties it back. His hair’s so much longer than it was back then; his face a little fuller, grown into a strong jaw and broad nose, and the smiling creases around his eyes glow copper under the lights.

There’s a second when you step onto the ice when, for the first time, you are afraid. Not of falling, not of failing, but of forgetting. You are not sure you remember how to be around him, when it’s been so long and you haven’t reached to him the way he constantly does to you. Your skates ring out your presence before you can say a word.

You hold yourself straighter as he turns and his eyes alight on you.

And then he starts to sprint, skates churning up slush in their wake over the yells of _careful with my phone!_ , calling out your name so loud and bright you think the whole of this small town must hear him. It is the only warning you get before he barrels into you and sweeps you up in a hug, spinning across the ice.

Through the laughter tinkling through his voice, you notice that he is the same height as you, still. Of all the things across the years, the distance that feels like a lifetime, this has not changed.

It makes you smile, very small, right before he lets you go.

 

_from some place distant  
as this morning—to cheer you up,_

_and to remind you_

 

that even as you measure seconds passed, the length of your suitcase, the rotations you have spun faster than breathing in the air, there are some things you cannot plan for.

There is a raw, wrenching pride in your chest when that bronze medal is placed around your neck, one that would make you weep were you anyone else. But some part of you is frozen: in disbelief, that this is happening and _right now,_ so soon; stuttering from the cameras flashing without pause in your face; frozen like you cannot think, head caught in a buzz of questions. You are proud, but you are scared.

This, if you continue to work hard and give yourself over to this sport, is your future.

After the press conference, you have the rest of the night to yourself, so you close your hotel room door behind you and determine not to come out. Two minutes later, your phone buzzes.

You see all caps and emojis and exclamation points, all from _him._ He is somewhere in the same city as you, perhaps the same hotel, maybe even on the same floor. You had no time to see him beforehand, no time to see him after.

For all that, he remembered you; he is _proud of uuuuu!!!!!! *^*9_

Proud, even, of you.

A smile breaks across your face despite yourself. You were happy, you remember, out on the ice. It has felt far away since you left it, and yet you have only to close your eyes to feel its chill kiss touch your throat. Everything came together in a way it never has before. As you charged forwards, and drew arms in a show of your own kind of strength, there was an indescribable joy in your chest, and you knew there was something no one else could show the world.

This, you realise now, sitting on the floor of a hotel room with your back against the bed, is what it must feel like to be Leo, weaving his heart into the music on the ice for everyone to see.

If you continue to work hard and give yourself over to this sport, maybe this all-abiding love is your future too.

 

 

_today you get a telegram_

 

quiet and unobtrusive, like he just sat down beside you and took out his headphones to a comfortable silence where you didn't need to say a thing. You don't even notice it until an hour later. Sometimes this makes you feel guilty, when every time you message him his reply is only moments away: a string of words and emojis that lift off the screen and form into his face, alight before you. Mostly, you are glad; that in all the fast-moving world, there is a boy who will wait for you to take your time. Today you are occupied with repairs to your bike; tomorrow you may not be able to settle your thoughts well enough to say something back.

Time is so fleeting, and there is not enough of it. He gives you some of his freely, and it is all the more precious.

You open your messenger, and consider with care what you type. You think of his smile when you press  _send,_  and it lightens your heart; it fills it with light.

 

_to remind you that,_  
_among your duties, pleasure_  
_is a thing_

_that also needs accomplishing_

 

which he knows because he’s watchful. But not a strategist; nor like yourself, keeping one eye always open lest a fleeting opportunity become lost. Leo de la Iglesia is merely a boy with a big heart and a care for people you can hardly fathom.

(A care that you can hardly fathom, but for one person you still remember from over a year ago; you have a burning need to see him again, and see how he’s grown. This is different to that, but no less important.)

There are little things he makes sure you delight in. The clean, swift feel of a fresh pair of blades. The result of an afternoon making _tamales,_ hot and savoury and created with your own two hands. The roar of a motorbike; a thought for the future. The electric feel of music you can sculpt and craft into something that echoes the thrum of your soul. The second time you see the ocean in your life, and the way the wind sweeps salt spray cool across your sunburned skin.

The way the sunlight dapples across your cheek and holds you warm as you wake, on the floor of Leo’s bedroom on a Sunday morning, with your head resting on his knee.

The world moves fast, and you chase it, trying to move faster. But this quiet, you think in that moment before you open your eyes, is the thing you might give it all up for.

 

 

_today you get a telegram_

 

in an airport lounge, a backpack at your feet with your skates in it, and something lonely in your heart as you stare out to the darkening tarmac. You are the only person on this flight.

You always travel alone. A plane seat by yourself; the sole rider of a motorbike. It is freeing, to weave between the cars and find that faster path to your destination. It means you need not account for anyone but yourself; and taking care of yourself is the thing you know best, after all.

You are the only person on this flight, surrounded by faces you do not know and will not remember. There are always new people. You have had to remember many names, knowing they will forget yours eventually, and you are tired of keeping so long a memory.

You are the only person on this flight. It will be cold, so high up, the sky beyond the window dark, a journey you have made a hundred times that never makes you less tired and unable to sleep.

But a few gates away, someone else is catching a flight over the ocean, towards the end of a day. He sends you a telegram, and you remember that up there, beyond the dark, you and your lonely plane will be chasing the sun.

 

_it touches you  
as if you had a friend_

_and sunlight were a present  
he had sent you_

 

one that fits no matter how little space you have left in your suitcase; one that you can bring out any time, even when you have no time at all; one that in the vastness of it all, makes you feel small again. Your own size, when you do not have to shoulder the weight of a nation; not a hero, but human.

The first time you leave, it’s a CD, with songs he said he thought you’d like. Sometimes it’s nothing more than a link or a photo, something he knows you will smile at later; he will sometimes leave you with one of his precious hugs, which hold your chest at peace those times when it aches like wildfire.

You stare out at every city you inhabit from high-up places, and watch the way the sun reflects off the buildings and melts the harsh corners and cold stone until they too are warm and gentle. The light is always looking for the next place to touch.

Sometimes you wish you could capture that light, just some of it; bottle it with a stopper and a note and keep it until you need to remember something good he gave you:

_Today he sent me a video of his dog not letting him get up and it made me laugh._

_When I’m next in the States he says he’ll teach me how to drive a car._

_This song he sent me is in my favourite key._

_I was feeling bad all day and he called me out of the blue this evening like he just **knew**._

_Sometimes, he makes me feel lucky._

The insides of those bottles would be gold, fizzing and shining and dancing to a tune that never ends.

And the truth is, you _are_ lucky; he is not as breakable as a glass bottle. That is not the thing you must be careful of.

It is easy to forget to pack something made to play in the background.

 

 

_but today you get a telegram,_  
_from the heart in exile_  
_proclaiming the kingdom_

_still exists,_

 

and it mends your heart and breaks it anew all at the same time.

Home is far away across the sea, truly the other side of the world, and you have been chasing it for years and years. Now, it is all enclosed in a telegram, a hand beckoning; all in a few weeks you will arrive there, and never have to leave again.

Home is a sun shining fierce against a blue sky, and the thrill in your heart as you watch an eagle take to the air, led by the wind, and hear her call resound through every inch of your body, the call that means you know you are free.

But home, sometimes, sounds of a heart that beats in time to a beautiful song, love and joy and faith and pride, and you remember there is one more place you meant to return to.

 _I’m sorry I won’t be able to come and visit before I leave,_ you say: one last telegram, sent with a fleeting prayer into the night and without looking back, before, for the first time in years, you land home again.

 

 

 

It is so easy to leave the world behind. When the eagle takes off, it does not look back.

But you are not an eagle; you are a boy. You do not cease to exist in the parts of the world you leave behind. People have memories that are long, hearts that open, and when they look ahead, as they must and as they will, your back is still visible in the distance.

It isn’t until many years later that you know why he was scared, when you said you were leaving that first time.

 

 

 

_the king and queen alive,  
still speaking to their children,_

_—to any one among them  
who can find the time,_

 

yet it’s time which you have so little of, when all is said and done. You close your eyes and open them again, and a month has passed, or a birthday, or four minutes and thirty seconds which have left you heaving for breath and full of pride.

He has the same amount of time as you—perhaps more, from those days he has not needed to spend packing up his life and running to the next stop on the map. Maybe he has stored that extra time somewhere, like hoarding stamps or mobile data, and those curated reserves are the things that let him reach you. He would laugh and call himself an _Internet Detective,_ nothing more, but you know better, with all the gift of time he has bestowed upon you.

It’s easy to forget to respond. It takes years of learning to check your phone more than once in a blue moon; of memorising time zones and planning flights in sync; of sometimes speaking first. But he knows he can reach you; you know for certain you can reach him.

When you are in the same place again and his arm lands warm round your shoulder, it feels like another dream you have caught up to; one you didn’t even know you were chasing.

 

_to sit out in the sun and listen._

 

 

 

 

 

 

_Do you remember?  
that time and light are kinds _

_of love, and love_  
_is no less practical_  
_than a coffee grinder_

_or a safe spare tire?_

 

 

 

 

 

 

When you get home, it is with a full tank of gas, a bag of groceries in one hand, and a song still on your lips from the car radio. It made you want to dance, and you drummed out the rhythm on the steering wheel and saw copper spinning and flying in your mind’s eye.

The warmth of coffee and the smell of sunshine greet you as you come in the door, and toe off your shoes, and as he calls out your name and comes to greet you, there is delight in his voice and his smile like you’ve been away a year, not an hour.

Here is one thing you have learned, after all these years: that kindness and joy are things you need as much as a place to sleep and a goal to chase and a beat to live to and the thrum of a bike in your veins. Someone else can add to your to-do list once in a while, or maybe every day, in a neat cursive hand, his left, with loops like his laughter the first time you noticed this and were stunned into silence:

 

_an afternoon_

in a warm kitchen with strong coffee;

_a slow love song_

floating through the air, from a dance scene in an old movie;

_mountains_

outside that remind you of your home; you have two homes, and now you do not need to chase either, nor leave them behind in your pursuit of something bigger than you alone.

 

And sitting across the table from you,

 

_between “green thread”_  
_and “broccoli” you find_  
_that you have penciled “sunlight.”_

**Author's Note:**

> (also i know that Otabek is technically a whole entire centimetre taller than Leo but who’s going to notice one (1) centimetre when you and your friend-sometime-lowkey-crush reunite after years apart and he’s lovingly squeezing the breath out of you)
> 
> And a shout-out to Meg, who gave me _The Word_ as a LeoBeka poem in a Twitter meme a few days ago - it got my creative brain spinning and made me cry several times and made my fic brain come alive and excited in a way it hasn’t in months, and I'm very grateful  <3


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